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508 cian as well as the patient. Undismayed, however, by his full knowledge of the peril, he set off with this "forlorn hope," and remained a whole month in the midst of infection, until the plague was stayed; and this, too, in spite of an alarming attack of peritonitis, that threatened every moment while it lasted to involve him in the fate of the sufferers, by increasing his liability to infection. The duties which he had to undergo in Dumfries during his short sojourn there, were such as required the utmost of moral heroism. "It was terrible work," he thus wrote, "for the first few days. It was truly the City of the Plague. Such dreadful scenes I should never wish to be again obliged to witness; and what aggravated in no small degree the miseries and horrors inseparable from the agonies and dying groans of so many sufferers was, that the dread of contagion seemed to have torn asunder the social bonds of society, and the wretched victim had too often occasion to upbraid, with his last breath, the selfish fear of friends, and even of his nearest relations."

On the cessation of this most fearful of plagues, Dr. Reid, after a short interval, and while he was yearning for active employment, received two offers. The one was to settle in a medical vacancy near his native Bathgate, where he might have secured the quiet, easy, and respectable life of a country doctor, and talked politics with the parish minister, or general gossip with the laird's family. The other offer was to become a partner in the school of anatomy in Old Surgeons' Hall, Edinburgh, where the growing crowd of students required an addition to the usual staff of instructors. Here, as demonstrator, his duty would be a revolting one. He would have to wait all day, like a ghoul, in the dissecting-room, amidst mangled human subjects, and expound, from morning till night, the construction of these revolting masses, and trace in them the sources of those various maladies which flesh is heir to. He felt that he must thus dwell among the dead to benefit the living. He knew, also, that in this way alone he could prosecute those anatomical researches in reference to physiology, to which his whole heart was so intensely devoted. On this account, he did not hesitate to accept the office, notwithstanding the horror of his family at the idea of one of their number being a mangier of the dead—a very henchman of the common executioner! From 1833 to 1836, he continued to be the demonstrator of Old Surgeons' Hall, and his labours in this capacity have elicited the most enthusiastic encomiums from those distinguished successors who were originally his pupils. "He was the most painstaking demonstrator," one of them declares, "I ever knew or heard of. No 'grinder* paid by the hour could have displayed more patience, or taken more trouble to make anatomy easy to the meanest capacity. Where he might have contented himself in the discharge of his duty, by a bare demonstration and description of the parts, he seemed to be animated by a sincere purpose of stereotyping his lesson on the memory and understanding of the dullest of his audience. His patience with those who wished to learn had no limit." "We used to crowd round him," another pupil writes, "and ask questions on any point that was not thoroughly understood; but this was very seldom necessary; for such was the order, clearness, and minuteness of his description, that the subject was indeed made easy to the dullest comprehension. That kind of instruction, also, which with him, as with every great anatomist of this country, sought for illustration in those points bearing on surgical or medical practice, was never lost sight of; and I, for one, up to this hour, and I firmly believe on this account, have never forgotten his admirable demonstrations." In this way he was wont, during nine